On the top of the stack of books I'm reading now is Irène Némirovsky's Suite Française, a novel that takes place in France just as the Germans seize Paris in June, 1940. I'm only halfway through the novel now, but I'm engrossed in its contrast of the war's crazy beauty and horror, certainty and improvisation, and, of course, good and evil. Living my insular life as an American so many years later, it's hard to imagine what World War II must have been like for the average Parisian. Jean Patou L'Heure Attendue and Lucien Lelong Orgueil, both released in 1946 to commemorate the end of the war, bring an inkling of the feeling of relief and joy that the war's end brought.
L'Heure Attendue means "the awaited hour" in French, and according to the booklet that accompanied the 1984 Jean Patou Ma Collection, which includes L'Heure Attendue, the awaited hour was the Liberation, when "the mists have blown away, night is no more and the sun has risen again". The booklet adds that L'Heure Attendue gives off a "refined aroma, synonymous with a new mellowness of life". Its topnotes are lily of the valley, geranium, and lilac; its heart is ylang ylang, opopanax, rose, and jasmine; and its base is vanilla, mysore sandalwood, and patchouli. (Before we leave the booklet, I want to point out that it also mentions a cocktail that was popular just after the war called "Pink Flamingo Sperm" made of 1/3 fresh cream, 1/3 strawberry essence, and 1/3 cognac. To a gin martini girl like me, this sounds positively disgusting, like iced Britney Spears Fantasy in a glass.)
L'Heure Attendue Eau de Toilette has a calm warmth on my skin, just like the "mellowness" the booklet promises. It starts out gently aldehydic and floral in an Ingrid Bergman, grown-up but down-to-earth way, and then warms into a powdery wood scent. It is peaceful, secure, and stable. To me, it says that the end of the war was a time to sleep deeply and to start to make time from the pain of the past. Rations, poverty, and rebuilding were welcome respites from oppression.
Lucien Lelong Orgueil is a different take on the end of the war. In French, "Orgueil" means "pride". Richard Stamelman's book, Perfume, tells the story of Charlotte Dalbo, a French woman imprisoned at Birkenau in 1943. Dalbo smuggled a bottle of Orgueil into a rare shower at the concentration camp and poured it between her breasts, being careful not to rinse it away. "What a fine name for that day," Stammelman reports Dalbo later wrote. Of course, Orgueil wasn't released until three years later, but it's a telling story all the same.
Orgueil's expression of the end of the war is more passionate and assertive than that of L'Heure Attendue. My bottle of Orgueil Eau de Toilette is probably at least forty years old, and its topnotes have turned to urine-soaked cardboard. But once the ammonia smell burns down, Orgueil relaxes into civet-laced, dry, white flowers. The flowers feel celebratory, but the forceful, animalic undercurrent of the scent seems to say, "You're gone, but I'm still here, and I've come back stronger than before."
Suite Française's author, Némirovsky, never saw the liberation of Paris. She was Jewish, and in 1942 she was arrested and sent to Auschwitz where she died. Her victory — if you can call it that — was in making sense of the war the best she could with words. Perfumers made do with fragrance. Both types of artists left work that continues to tell stories and rouses us from complacency, if we let it.
Both Jean Patou L'Heure Attendue and Lucien Lelong Orgueil are discontinued. L'Heure Attendue is still available at a few online discounters; a "recreation and interpretation" of Orgueil can be ordered from lucienlelong.
Note: image via Belles de Pub.
Angela, thanks for this… although the “Pink Flamingo Sperm” drink is something I could safely have gone through life without knowing about. 🙂 I've been meaning to read Suite Francaise for some time, and you've just given me another nudge.
Oh, definitely read Suite Francaise. It feels very of its time, but sometimes I get tired of fiction where I feel the writer is standing over my shoulder telling me how edgy he is. Besides, it's such a great reminder of what that war might have been like for the average person.
Isn't that Pink Flamingo Sperm revolting? Blechh.
I don't read a lot of fiction, but I did get a laugh out of “the writer is standing over my shoulder telling me how edgy he is “.
It must have been pure jealous spite that made me say it…
Your descriptions of these scents are so evocative…thanks for the review. I'd like to sniff the Orgueil recreation. And, um, I'd pour that Pink Flamingo stuff over vanilla ice cream…
Have you ever seen Auntie Mame with Rosalind Russell? In one scene she's offered a daquiri, and the host says, “You'll never guess the secret ingredient.” “Chocolate ice cream?” she guesses. Mame was a martini girl, too. (Later, the host's wife asks if she likes gin. When Mamie vigorously says yes, the host's wife says, “Good! We'll have to get out the cards and play some after dinner.”)
And you're welcome for the review!
Great article. Thank you.
Hysterical!
I'm glad you liked it!
It's a great movie.
LOL! I'm not addicted to chocolate, but I used to snort cocoa…
Remember the look on her face when he says 'honey'! What a wonderful film….and what a wonderful, evocative essay, Angela. So beautiful. Thank you!
I'm not even going to ask.
The horror on her face! I wonder what perfume Mame wore?
I'm glad you liked it.
You have a gift for writing about serious things with such lightness. I admire that. I always enjoy reading your posts. I loved this piece and it makes me want to revisit La Collection. The lightness of your approach lets me really see your point:
“Both types of artists left work that continues to tell stories and rouses us from complacency, if we let it.” Hooray for that. Did you find both perfumes in Portland?
Thank you so much! Your comment is really encouraging. I don't spend much time putting together my posts, and I'm not always sure how I'll feel waking up with them in the morning compared to other writing that I can let sit for a while and then revise with a fresh eye.
L'Heure Attendue I found in Portland, but I had to send away for Orgueil. It really had started to turn, too, and I'm not sure I would have bought it had I been able to smell it first.
Angela, what a wonderful review! It is so easy to read and so packed with information. My mom went through the war in France, and was never the same. I wish she could have had a perfume to save her.
The Flamingo drink is a real head-scratcher. Now you would have thought that “Flamingo Feather” would have been enough. I can't even imagine the color appealing, let alone the name. I'm a vodka girl myself, and I'll just pour a shot of vodka over premium vanilla ice cream, grind a few twists of tellicherry pepper over it and enjoy. The flamingo can stay unmolested on the other side of the fence.
I'm with you–leave the Flamingo out of the picture altogether. Vanilla ice cream with vodka and pepper sounds really interesting, though. Gin and ice cream? Not so interesting.
Is your mother still alive? I wonder what she'd think of Suite Francaise.
Angela, this is just such a wonderfull book, I have read it just after arriving in Prague in 2005.
What a good idea to write about L'Heure Attendue and Orgueil in the context of Suite Francaise.
Hope to be able to try these perfumes some day.
Re. Némirovsky. I don't want to turn this into a political debate so I'll just say, don't get all misty eyed about her: she did her utmost to deny her Jewishness. She converted to Catholicism in 1939, when she sensed it was dangerous to be Jewish; she wrote to the Vichy authorities to let them know that she had renounced her Jewish parentage (she even said she hated her fellow Jews) and she wrote articles in the most antisemitic newspapers of the time. She was scared (everyone was – my parents were in Paris at the time: I know what it was like) and she panicked, but in the light of how others behave she was a disgrace to her race. She was not the Jewish martyr she's been hailed to be.
Thank you, I hope you can try them, too.
Interesting! Well, they sure didn't put that in the book. And in the end it didn't save her, either. It makes the story all that more complex. Thanks for the info, Bela.
That's what I understand, too.
Thanks. It's so disappointing, but human, I guess.
Well, no, *she* wrote that book so she wasn't going to say that, was she?
Very few people behaved that way and, no, it didn't save her or them: it just made them look bad.
I thought, rather, that book's introduction or lengthy afterward might have said something–of course, the afterward might have, I'm not quite there yet.
Still, it's disappointing.
Oh, I see, sorry.
I doubt the afterword will say anything derogatory about the author: the editor or translator wouldn't want you to have a view of her as a coward and a traitor to the moral values of her ancestors, would they?
In another 100 pages I'll be able to tell you for sure!
Hi, Angela
The Wikipedia article you hyperlink to above has a link to a New Republic article called “Scandale Francaise,” which criticizes her translators for omitting evidence of her anti-Semitic writings–a letter to Marshall Petain pleading for clemency as an “honorable” foreigner being the most glaring example. I'm loathe to use phrases like “traitor to one's race,” (as that seems an extremist, racist sort of term in itself), but she does appear to have had deep self-hate in a strong, highly repellant and disgusting form; for her Jewish origins as well as towards Jewish women in particular.
It is sad to discover that an art piece–whether literature, music or painting– that you like or enjoy has been created by someone whose other actions you find utterly repellant and disturbing. I recently discovered a musette/French cafe-style music band called “Les Primitifs du Futur” was appearing near me this summer. After listening to their music online, I thought I had discovered something neat and lovely, only to find out that one of the band members is the cartoonist Robert Crumb, notorious for his ugly, sadistic depictions of women and racism in his later work. It does have the effect of making your skin crawl.
It definitely is difficult to separate the artist from her or his work, and I know I spent many an evening in college arguing the different sides of it. After all, most of us (certainly me) are looking for heroes.
In the end, though, as long as I feel like the artist's work isn't damaging, and if I can manage to forget the artist behind the work while I enjoy it, I'm all right with it. But I do have to admit that if, for instance, I knew that an artist hurt animals, I'd never be able to enjoy his work, no matter how glorious it might be, because I'd be so upset. If, on the other hand, an artist kept a slave two hundred years ago–which is disgusting, of course–it probably wouldn't interfere with my enjoyment of his work. I guess it's a personal line for everyone.
I have L'Heure Attendue. Many years ago, I walked in, on what was, at that time, a yearly thing Patou did with Bloomingdale's. They would repackage their discontinued scents into their classic bottles and re-release them for a short time to Bloomies. A month, I think I remember being told. I bought this one and one called Vacances which celebrated the beginning of paid vacations in France. That one is a lovely green scent. L'Heure is a warm wintery scent. You would think that over the many years that I've owned them, they would go rancid, but actually, they get more beautiful with age, in the bottle and on my skin. Kind of like a great wine.
I'm so glad to hear that it ages well, since lord knows when I'll finish off my bottle–but I do love it!
I have some Vacances, too. It's such a wonderful spring scent.